An inverted pendulum type vehicle is a vehicle in which a base body assembled with a traveling motion unit which travels on a floor surface and an actuator unit which drives the traveling motion unit, is also assembled with a payload supporting part of an occupant which is capable of freely tilting with respect to the perpendicular direction, and is a vehicle with a necessity to move the traveling motion unit in a manner to move a fulcrum of the inverted pendulum, so as to maintain a tilt angle of the payload supporting part to a desired tilt angle (so as to prevent the payload supporting part from fall due to tilting).
As a control technology of this type of the inverted pendulum type vehicle, for example, the one found in Patent Document 1 had been proposed by the present applicant.
In the Patent Document 1, there is disclosed a control technology of an inverted pendulum type vehicle in which a base body of a vehicle assembled with the payload supporting part of an occupant is provided so as to be freely tiltable about two axes, specifically about one axis in a longitudinal direction and about the other axis in a lateral direction, with respect to the ball-shaped traveling motion unit. In this technology, a torque command value of an electric motor as the actuator is determined so as to make a measured value of a tilt angle of the payload supporting part (a tilt angle about the two axes of the longitudinal direction and the lateral direction) to a predetermined desired tilt angle, and also to make a measured value of a traveling velocity in the longitudinal direction and the lateral direction of the vehicle converge to a desired velocity. The vehicle is made to travel by carrying out an operation control of the electric motor according to the torque command value.
As a vehicle which is capable of functioning as an inverted pendulum type vehicle, for example, the one disclosed in Patent Documents 2 and 3 have been proposed by the present applicant.